External Environment Analysis
Instructions:
Step 1: Research
In completing the report, you will use the chapters in the eBook as a guide and perform research on the company and answer the required elements below in narrative form following the steps provided.
in a partial SWOT, Porter’s Five Forces, PESTEL, EFE, and CPM.
Step 3: Specific Company for All Three Projects
You will be specifically assigned by your instructor to write your independent report on one focal company. The assigned company must be used for all three projects in this course. You are not allowed to write the report on any other company different from the company specifically assigned by your instructor. If a company other than that assigned to you is used, a zero will be assigned.
The companies that your instructor has assigned to each of you are listed in List of Companies.
Step 4: Introduction
Create an introductory paragraph. The Introduction should clearly and concisely convey the main points of the project’s requirements. Review the following website to learn how to write an introductory paragraph: http://www.writing.ucsb.edu/faculty/donelan/intro.html
Step 5: How to Set Up the Report
In the past weeks, you have learned new concepts and techniques to assess the business environment. You will use these techniques (tools), concepts and information from your own research to perform the external analysis of the selected company’s environment. You are not lifting from other sources but performing your own analysis.
Create a Word or Rich Text Format (RTF) document using 12-point font. The final product cannot be longer than 16 pages in length, which includes all tables and matrices but excludes the title page and reference page. Those items identified in the technical analysis should appear under the appropriate heading in the paper. Do no use an Appendix.
Follow the following format using these topics as headings:
• Title page with title, your name, the course number, the instructor’s name
• Company overview
• Industry analysis
• Competitive analysis: [Use the company’s closest competitors (3) plus the selected company.]
• Techniques Analysis: PESTEL, Five Forces, OT from partial SWOT, EFE, and CPM.
• Trends: Discuss trends significant to the industry and company and discuss key areas of uncertainty related to trends or events that potentially could impact the company’s strategy.
• Conclusion of the external analysis
• Reference page.

Step 6: Conclusion
Create a concluding paragraph. The Conclusion is intended to emphasize the purpose/significance of the analysis, emphasize the significance/consequence of findings, and indicate the wider applications that are derived from the main points of the project’s requirements. Review the following website to learn how to write a concluding paragraph: http://www.writing.ucsb.edu/faculty/donelan/concl.html
Step 7: Submit the Report in the Assignment Folder
Submitting the project to the Assignment Folder is considered the student’s final product and therefore ready for grading by the instructor. It is incumbent upon the student to verify the Project is the correct submission. No exceptions will be considered by the instructor.
Report Requirements to Follow
In writing the report,
• Use the grading rubric while completing the project to ensure all requirements are met that will lead to the highest possible grade.
• Third person writing is required. Third person means that there are no words such as “I, me, my, we, or us” (first person writing), nor is there use of “you or your” (second person writing).
• Contractions are not used in business writing, so do not use them.
• No direct quotes except for mission statement and vision statement. For all other source material used in the analysis, you will not use direct quotation marks but will instead paraphrase. What this means is that you will put the ideas of an author or article into your own words rather than lifting directly from a source document. You may not use more than four consecutive words from a source document, as doing so would require direct quotation marks. Changing words from a passage does not exclude the passage from having quotation marks.
• Use in-text citations and provide a reference list that contains the reference associated with each in-text citation.
• You may not use books in completing this project.
• Provide the page or paragraph number in every in-text citation presented.